Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Activist Judges Endanger Our Children re Transgenderism
Just when I’d begun to believe that ordinary people in this country were realizing what a travesty and deception transgender treatment is, an appellate court proves how inept and uneducated the courts can be. Rather than making sure they had the latest research on this controversial treatment, the court followed the leftist narrative and have reverted to transgender treatment that is not only useless, but can be harmful to our children.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that state health care plans in North Carolina and West Virginia must cover gender-affirming surgeries:
The appellate decision resolved two cases, one involving a North Carolina state health plan for teachers and state employees and the other involving West Virginia’s Medicaid Program. Both plans contained treatment exclusions for gender-affirming care. The North Carolina plan excluded ‘treatment or studies leading to or in connection with sex changes or modifications and related care.’ The West Virginia Medicaid Program paid for some gender-affirming care, but the plan excluded coverage for gender-affirming surgery to treat gender dysphoria.
For the court decision, you can go here.
It’s clear that Judge Roger Gregory, writing on behalf of the majority, has bought into the leftist agenda, and has no idea what the most recent data actually tells us. He and the rest of his colleagues in the majority have no idea that most of the transgender treatments for children have been challenged or discredited (which I will explain shortly). To defend their legislation, here are the premises of the two states’ legislation:
According to the states, their exclusions are based on diagnosis: everyone gets covered for cancer surgery; no one for dysphoria surgery. Contemplating this idea, the majority opinion by Judge Roger Gregory at first sounds uncertain, if obtuse. ‘Is removing a patient’s breasts to treat cancer the same procedure as removing a patient’s breasts to treat gender dysphoria?’ he asks. ‘There is no caselaw to ground this discussion nor obvious first principles.’ He is undeterred, and he concludes that gender dysphoria and transgender status are intertwined, so that such insurance exclusions are nothing more than a proxy for discriminating against gender identity.
The unconscionable factor in this decision is that because the court has decided to make a political statement, children will undergo gender surgery and possibly be harmed for life.
There are likely many people who are not aware of the latest research findings, just as the judges were not, but the UK decided this relatively new field of gender study was worthy of exploring in more depth:
In England, Dr. Hilary Cass, pediatrician, was hired to study findings in gender identity. At the University of York, they identified some stunning data:
Two papers examined the quality and development of current guidelines and recommendations for managing gender dysphoria in children and young people. Most of the 23 clinical guidelines reviewed were not independent or evidence based, the researchers found.
A third paper on puberty blockers found that of 50 studies, only one was of high quality. . . Most of them lacked ‘an independent and evidence-based approach and information about how recommendations were developed,’ the researchers said.
In reflecting on the ruling made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, it’s clear that the states were better served by their legislatures who were likely better informed on the latest data available. In another dissent on this case, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III explained the limits and dangers of judicial activism:
‘This is imperial judging at its least defensible,’ he says, suggesting a coming transgender Roe v. Wade. ‘What plaintiffs propose is nothing less than to use the Constitution to establish a nationwide mandate that States pay for emerging gender dysphoria treatments.’
The great mistake of Bostock is that it arrogated to judges a policy decision that belongs to legislatures, which can better weigh competing interests and evolving evidence on biology and medicine. Now the consequences are coming due, and the Fourth Circuit’s judicial ukase deserves the Supreme Court’s attention.
Let’s hope that SCOTUS takes the case, and that children are somehow protected from this life-altering treatment in the meantime.
Published in Healthcare
In partial defense of the court, if the law and the coverage terms of programs say that care done pursuant to a diagnosis by a physician operating within the standard of care for his or her specialty must be covered, and if board-certified docs are prescribing leeches, voodoo dolls or transgender mutilations in accordance with the prevailing professional opinion, the court should probably still not replace professional judgment with its own opinion and bar coverage.
If there is a whacko majority in control of a branch of medicine, it is up to the medical profession to fix that. Courts should not get to insert the legal profession’s preferred view on chemotherapy or antibiotics in contradiction of established professional notions about the prevailing standard of care.
So it should not be left up to judges to straighten out bad (or non-existent) science if the people in the white coats and cool decorative stethoscopes won’t do it.
Legislators can change the terms of required coverage but if they don’t and if the medical profession is not self-correcting, then permitting and paying for teen sex mutilations will likely persist.
I went to the decision text itself. The opinion is disturbing in two ways: 1) it assumes that body modification for transsexuals is “medically necessary”, and 2) that “gender identity” is a protected class. I may have missed it, but I am not aware of a legislative change or SCOTUS decision that gender identity is protected in the same manner as biologic sexual characteristics. And, as for “medically necessary”, to be so it has to be safe and efficacious. Sad.
“Medically necessary” is probably deference to whatever the docs in that specialty claim. “Gender identity” has crept into law. Bidenistas have shoved it into Title IX and it is a de facto notion in HR departments.
You are right to be disturbed because both medicine and law are being corrupted to accommodate this insanity.
Let’s not forget science in general. There was an article about the number of articles on fake scientific topics.
I agree. But when the doctors don’t hold each other accountable, who’s going to take them to task??
I have unlimited gratitude and respect for the doctors who have saved my life and that of my family and friends. They are an amazing group of people that I will always admire. They have to have intellectual and creative freedom. Doctors and patients should have total control over medical care. No one has the right to interfere. Some of the best medical care I know of began with the sentence, “I know the other three doctors said this, but I think . . . ”
The truth is that there is no profession that monitors their field well. These regulatory boards and licensing boards are often corrupt (the Ivermectin story), they impede progress (Lyme disease treatment), and they interfere in the professional lives of the good practitioners within their fields. They are governed by whims and politics.
In short, the medical profession as a group has all the same problems our entire country has as a group. Sigh.
That’s a very clear statement of the problem, and it can only be corrected by the medical/insurance industry.
It makes we wonder, Jim, what it will take for them to straighten themselves out?
Reminded me of:
Added to my comment 7: I do not know what to do about the transgender issue. It’s a truly terrible situation. If parents don’t go along with what a doctor says, in some states, their children will be taken away from them. We saw the same thing with the controversial Ritalin “treatments.” This is immoral and should be illegal.
The only thing I can come up with is an ironclad amendment to the Constitution that protects parents’ right to direct their children’s healthcare and education.
I don’t want to see doctors controlled by their professional field because those licensing boards are often wrong and prone to go with the latest fads. I’ve seen many fads come and go in medicine.
It is a huge problem. The doctors administering this “treatment” for children are wrong to be doing it.
If medical professions prescribe mutilation for children, courts should not merely rubber-stamp such monstrous “treatments.”
There’s still a problem with a Constitutional amendment, in that you may not be able to get it enforced until you reach a federal court, perhaps even SCOTUS. It’s pretty clear that city governments, county governments, and state governments don’t appear to have any reluctance to pass clearly unconstitutional laws. And people suffer from them until someone finally has the time and money to appeal them high enough to get them overturned. Often people continue to suffer even after that. Because technically, a city/county/state could force EVERYONE to take a case up to federal court/SCOTUS while continuing to ignore previous rulings.
As I’ve put it for years, “no great hand comes down from the sky to make people – including judges – do the right thing.”
Nobody in power – including judges – goes to jail for not following the law. Judges may get removed for not managing their court budget properly etc. But not for being wrong on the law. Being wrong on the law, even consistently wrong and overturned etc, is just part of “the process” that they – and many other people – more or less worship. What it really turns out to be, is a game they play with other peoples’ lives.
Professional organizations tend to get taken over by political hacks who are more interested in politics and power than in the legitimate purposes of the professions. Hence the AMA, for just one example.
Lawsuits. And lots of them from the growing number of children rendered infertile and worse.
I wonder how practical that ends up being, considering the share of doctors involved who might be long-retired – or deceased – before the lawsuits come.
I think the problems will be very manifest within a decade. There are enough stories out there now that would make a prudent person cautious. But I know the numbers have to be much larger to break through the media suppression.
Many hospitals and clinics will still be around. Their medical malpractice insurers will also be around.
Like with Lobotomies and Electro-shock therapy, truth will out. It is starting to happen in UK/Europe.
DEI has to be wrung out of all of STEM.